Excerpts from

The West.

Every pious Christian must hope that the day will come at last when the Church of Christ will be united and whole and be in truth the Holy Catholic Church whose existence is an article of faith. The hope has so far been vain. Almost from the outset there has been schism and even heresy. As the Church on earth grew in size, so it grew in divisions. The jealous rivalries of hierarchs, the interference and resentment of the laity and the love of theologians to expose the damnable errors made by others of their craft have combined with differences in historical development and in spiritual temperament to break it into separate units; and even where cracks have been mended the line of the former breakage has always remained exposed.

The most serious division in the medieval Church was that which came to separate its two most important branches, the great Church of Old Rome and the great Church of New Rome which is Constantinople and of her sister Patriarchates. There had been differences in outlook from, the earliest times. The Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries had increased a spirit of rivalry between the Patriarchates, lasting until the Arab conquest of Syria and Egypt left Constantinople the one free Patriarchate of the East and the spokesman for Eastern Orthodoxy. Meanwhile the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West had made the Roman Church the surviving representative of unity and order. Western Christendom with its numerous rival lay rulers began to look on the Roman Pope as the head of the Christian commonwealth, whereas in the East the Emperor remained the Viceroy of God. There had always been a difference in language between the two halves of the old Empire; and language tends to influence thought. Greek, with its rich vocabulary, its subtlety and its flexibility, induced a different philosophical outlook from that induced by Latin, with its legalistic precision; and, as time went on, it became rare for anyone to speak or understand both tongues. Inadequate translations increased misunderstanding. Political needs and problems differed. Quarrels, even schisms, occurred from time to time throughout the Dark Ages; and, if none of them was final, it was because neither side wished for a definite breach and because contact between East and West was not too close, and divergencies could be tactfully ignored.¹¹¹

It needed a series of political accidents to set off the sparks that flared into the final schism. The development of the Hildebrandine conception of the Papacy as the supreme power in Christendom coincided with the period of the Norman conquest of Byzantine Italy, with the expansion of Italian trade in the East and with the whole long, unhappy episode of the Crusades. The closer contact not only showed that the political interests of Eastern and Western Christendom were by no means the same and, indeed, were often so far opposed as to lead to war; it also emphasized the differences that had grown up not only in ritual and ecclesiastical practice but also even in doctrine between the two great Churches. Even after the notorious quarrel between the Patriarch Michael Cerularius and Cardinal Humbert which led to their excommunication of each other in 1054, the ruling authorities on both sides were anxious to avoid schism.¹¹² Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in a desire to bring help to the Eastern Christians. On the Eastern side the Emperors in particular were anxious to preserve good relations. After the Norman invasions and the launching of the Crusades they realized how dangerous a hostile West could be to them. Most leading Byzantine ecclesiastics, while unwilling to admit that they were wrong in their doctrine and their practices, believed that a judicious use of Economy might smooth over the difficulties. Until well into the twelfth century the ordinary Byzantine believed the ordinary Westerner to be a genuine fellow-Christian, however deplorable his habits might be.¹¹³

Unfortunately, the more that Eastern and Western Christendom, saw of each other, the more, in general, they disliked what they saw. The simple Westerner, who had expected to find the Eastern Christians to be like himself, found instead a people with a strange language, strange customs and strange religious services, a people, moreover, which did not share his burning desire to go out and fight the infidel. The Byzantines on their side, though they were accustomed to variations in liturgical ways and language, with the Slavonic Churches nearby, found the Westerners to be crude, lawless and disrespectful, with a bellicosity that was ill timed and undiplomatic; and they were deeply shocked by the fighting priests in the Crusader armies. Dislike and distrust increased, to the genuine distress of the authorities. But conferences and debates only worsened matters, emphasizing the differences not only in political outlook and interests but also in religious practice and in theology.

The failure to come together led to the Fourth Crusade, the sack of Constantinople and the establishment of Latin states in the Christian East. This was a disaster from which Byzantium never properly recovered and which it never forgave. So, though almost every Emperor, both while the Empire was in exile at Nicaea and after the recapture of Constantinople in 1261, tried to keep the door open for reunion, the vast majority of his subjects would now never countenance any compromise with the West. The opposition was strongest among the lesser clergy; for wherever the Latins had established themselves they had installed a Latin upper hierarchy which tried to force Latin practices and Latin doctrines upon the Orthodox congregations. Support for the union was limited. But there were Byzantines who shared with most of the Emperors the view that the Empire could not afford politically to risk the enmity of Western Europe, particularly when the Turkish menace loomed larger and larger; and there were others who felt that Byzantium, by cutting itself off from the West religiously, was cutting itself off also from its intellectual life and was being left in cultural isolation.

It was a difficult choice for a Byzantine. Had the Orthodox states of Eastern Europe ever been able to bring themselves together in a real alliance, they might have been able to hold out against the West and the Turks alike. But civil wars and the latent dislike of the Balkan Slavs for the Greeks prevented any such alliance. If the Turks were to be driven back it could only be with Western help. But how much help could the West provide? The Crusading movement was dissolving in disillusion. The Holy War had been preached too often against the personal and political enemies of the Papacy, regardless of their faith, to retain its spiritual appeal. If union were achieved the Pope might preach a Crusade to save Byzantium. But who would answer the call? The Venetians and the Genoese, with their great navies and their commitments in the East, would be far more useful allies. But they had always been singularly unresponsive to Papal exhortations; and, besides, they would never co-operate with each other. Many Byzantine statesmen wondered whether the practical advantages of union would be large enough to outweigh the disadvantages. The theologians of Byzantium, however, were unconcerned with pragmatical issues. They saw the question sub specie aeternitatis; and it was they who conducted the debates.

Every attempt at union was accompanied by a number of theological debates and supported or opposed by a number of tracts and sermons. The debates make sterile reading; for they never got down to the fundamental issue. The real bar to union was that Eastern and Western Christendom felt differently about religion; and it is difficult to debate about feelings. Moreover, what was the ultimate authority which both sides would accept? It was admitted that this should be the Holy Scriptures, the findings of such Councils as both parties recognized as having been Oecumenical, and the writings of such Fathers of the Church as were generally admitted to have been orthodox and inspired. The debaters therefore spent their time in hurling texts at each other. The texts were often misquoted or mistranslated and were seldom conclusive. The Scriptures and the canons of the Councils sometimes had nothing relevant to say about the questions actually at issue; and, though the Fathers of the Church may have been divinely inspired, inspiration did not always produce consistency. They often disagreed with each other and occasionally even contradicted themselves. Some of the tracts and sermons are more profound. But they, too, were deliberately political. It is only by studying the writings intended, rather, for consumption within the Churches that we can appreciate the true differences between them. The whole question of mysticism and mystical theory, which was of fundamental importance to the Byzantines and on which the West held other opinions, was kept out of the debates, deliberately, it seems, in the case of the Union Council of Florence, because the issue could not be resolved by the methods used in the debates.

The debates were also sterilized by the avoidance of a direct discussion of the essential practical issue, which was the Pope’s claim to supremacy over the whole Church. It barely needed discussion, because everyone knew that union meant in fact the submission of the Orthodox Church to the authority of Rome. Even the most extreme Latin apologists did not expect the Greeks to admit this authority without the opportunity of discussing theological and ritual differences at a Council. But the exact relations of the Pope with a Council, though it greatly exercised the Western theologians at the Council of Basle, was left untouched at these Union councils; nor was there discussion about the relations of the Emperor with the Pope. Yet the discussion of differences in doctrine and in practice was somewhat pointless when one side was determined to secure the total submission of the other. If the average Byzantine had no confidence in the value of a Union council, it was because he saw that its intention was to force his religious life under the control of a foreign potentate whose claims he thought to be uncanonical and whose doctrines faulty, and whose followers in the past had shown themselves to be hostile and intolerant. The most for which he could hope from such a council was to be graciously permitted to retain certain of his ritual usages.¹¹⁴

Outside the council-chamber the Pope’s claim to supremacy was hotly discussed. To the Latins and the Unionists it was based on texts. They sought to show that the Fathers of the Greek Church as well as of the Latin had down the ages held that the Bishop of Rome was the legitimate heir of Peter, with the power to bind and to loose: that is to say, that he had supreme authority in the universal Church on matters of faith and of discipline. There were many texts to support them, even if some were used a little disingenuously. But here again the Fathers were not always consistent. The Roman see had in the past received special reverence. The Bishop of Rome, or his representative, acted as princeps senatus, as tenant of the top-ranking see in Christendom. Except in minor details his views had prevailed at them. No one who desired the unity of Christendom wished rashly to break off relations with its senior hierarch. On the contrary, to be in communion with him had been, in many eyes, the outward sign of membership of the undivided Church. Clerics who disagreed with their local hierarchs were glad to appeal to him on matters of discipline and doctrine. But could he, in such cases, do more than admonish, and advise? Could he interfere legally in the internal affairs of another Patriarchate? The Council of Sardica in 343 had apparently given him this right. But it was not an Oecumenical Council; and the Second Oecumenical Council implicitly denied it, at least as regards Constantinople. Again, were his pronouncements on faith absolutely binding? He could be consulted as the highest individual mortal authority; and his opinion would carry immense weight. When John of Damascus and Theodore of Studium each in turn found himself in opposition to an Iconoclastic Emperor who had the Patriarch of Constantinople under his control, each demanded an appeal to Rome, protesting that Iconoclasm could not be introduced without the consent of its Bishop. But, at the same time, John considered that it was ultimately for an Oecumenical Council to settle the matter, while Theodore believed that Rome must act with the co-operation of the four other Patriarchs; no one put forward the theory of the Pentarchy of Patriarchs more clearly than he.¹¹⁵ Moreover, while Theodore was still living, the Pope himself, in Byzantine eyes, broke the unity of Christendom by crowning a rival Emperor in the West, thus interfering, as it were, with the apostolic succession of Emperors. The Byzantine court saved its face by soon recognizing Charlemagne as a co-Emperor, thus bringing him into line. But the harm was done.¹¹⁶ Consequently, when it appeared a little later that Rome had countenanced an addition to the Creed without the permission or endorsement of an Oecumenical Council, faith in the unity of Christendom was not strong enough to prevent an angry reaction at Constantinople. The Patriarch of Constantinople may have been spurred on in his protest by jealousy and ambition, as Rome liked to claim. It naturally riled the bishop of the capital city of Christendom, who had already, despite Rome’s protests, assumed the title of Oecumenical to emphasize his position as such, to find himself considered as a junior and subservient partner to the bishop of a revered but decaying city in Italy. He doubtless relished the triumph of catching his senior partner out in uncanonicity and heresy. But his indignation and that of his Church was perfectly genuine. Rome held that the addition to the Creed was legitimate in that it elucidated an accepted point of doctrine. To the Byzantines the acts and decisions of an Oecumenical Council were inspired by the Holy Spirit. To alter them for the purpose of elucidation could only be effected by another Oecumenical Council. Moreover, this addition seemed in the eyes of Byzantine theologians to alter the whole sense of the doctrine. For the Roman Church to make the change unilaterally was an insult to the Oecumenical Councils and to the Holy Spirit, the more so as the addition concerned the Holy Spirit. It was the word Filioque, placed after the words ex Patre in describing the procession of the Holy Spirit. The West might think the addition trivial. To Gibbon, as to many other historians, ‘the reason, even of divines, might allow that the difference is inevitable and harmless’. But the Greek divines reasoned otherwise. The difference was in fact the expression of two opposing attitudes in religious thought.¹¹⁷

In the meantime the growing atmosphere of hostility led people to notice and complain of divergencies in ritual, to which hitherto no importance had been given. The Greeks accused the Latins of Judaistic tendencies because they fasted on Saturdays, especially at Quadragesima. They remarked on the Latin omission to celebrate the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts on fast days in Lent. They professed to be shocked that Latin priests shaved off their beards, though that was a complaint that better-educated Greek theologians dismissed as ridiculous. There was the question of the marriage of clergy, which the Latins now banned but which the Greeks allowed and even advocated in the case of priests who had not taken monastic vows. There was the question of divorce, which the Latins forbade but which the Greeks, to whom marriage was a civil contract as well as a sacrament, permitted on certain grounds. There was the doctrinal point of Purgatory, which seemed to the Greeks to be too precise. It was arrogant, they thought, to profess to know what God in his wisdom might choose to do with the souls of the departed; though they were prepared to believe that souls not actually condemned to Hell might yet be considered unworthy to be admitted at once into the presence of God, and that prayer might aid such souls on their upward path. The Latins on their side questioned two Greek practices in the celebration of the Eucharist, first, the use of the zeon, the warm water mixed into the chalice, and secondly, and more severely, the Epiklesis, the appeal to the Holy Spirit, without which, so the Greeks held, the change in the elements could not be completed.

Most of these differences were unimportant; and serious theologians were prepared to condone them. But there was one difference in ritual practice which was hotly contested. This was whether the bread used in the Sacrament should be leavened or unleavened. It seems that the use of unleavened bread only became general in the West in the ninth century, and, like the contemporary addition to the Creed, both were adopted first as a regular practice north of the Alps, though both had originated elsewhere. The argument in favour of unleavened bread was that Christ Himself had undoubtedly used it at the Last Supper. The Greeks admitted this; but they maintained that the Old Testament dispensation came to an end with Christ’s death upon the Cross and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The leaven symbolized the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Latin usage seemed to them, as did the Latin refusal to admit the Epiklesis, an insult to the Holy Spirit. In the course of the controversy other arguments were adduced, some of them slightly absurd, as when some Greeks declared that not only did the word αρτος mean leavened bread but connected it, with the type of punning false etymology dear to the medieval mind, with αρτιος, ‘perfected’. The Latins could retort that αρτος was used in the Gospel for the bread which Christ broke; but their plea that leaven was forbidden because Christ bade His disciples to ‘beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees’ was hardly convincing. In fact neither side was ready to abandon a cherished tradition. The Greeks felt so strongly on this issue that their popular pejorative name for the Latins was the Azymites, the unleavened, with the implication that they were untouched by the Holy Spirit.¹¹⁸

These ritual points, even that about the bread, need not have formed a bar to union. Tolerance, Economy and a willingness to admit that alternative practices might be permissible would have overcome the difficulty. Economy, the belief that a special grace or dispensation might be granted to condone minor error in the interest of the smooth running of the House of God, was a doctrine which the Greeks found sympathetic. But they could not bring themselves to apply it either to the Papal claim for complete supremacy or to the theological crime of the addition to the Creed.

To many pious persons, in the East as well as in the West, it has seemed strange that the unity of Christendom should have been split by a preposition. It should be equally possible to lead a holy life in the grace of God whether one believes that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son or from the Father through the Son. The theologians of the West could not see that the difference was of importance. But to an Eastern theologian a vital principle is involved; the Latin addition upsets his notion of the Godhead. The inability of the Latins to appreciate the full implications of the addition that they made to the Creed showed how far the basic conceptions of Trinitarian theology in East and West had drifted apart.

The Scriptural text on which the Eastern view of the Procession of the Holy Spirit is based is St. John 15:26: ‘But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.’ The verses in the next chapter (13 to 15) which say of the Spirit: ‘he shall receive of mine’, and later: ‘all things that the Father hath are mine’, did not, to the Easterners, affect the previous text, though Photius and his opponents were to spend much energy in discussing the word ‘mine’, εκ του εμου, in the Greek, which Photius declared that the Latins interpreted as though it were τα εμου; nor were Paul’s rather vague references to ‘the Spirit of Christ’ relevant. The Fathers of the Second Oecumenical Council, when they had the duty of completing the Nicene Creed, were satisfied to pronounce that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, without making mention of the Son. But the Spanish Fathers of the sixth century, busy combating the Arianism of the Visigoths, felt that greater precision was needed and added the word ‘Filioque’. From Spain the addition moved northward, to Charlemagne’s court, perhaps through the agency of the learned Spaniard Theodulphus, Bishop of Orleans; and by the middle of the ninth century it was in general use in Germany, and German missionaries working in Slav lands brought it to the notice of the Patriarch Photius. Pope Leo III had omitted the word when he had caused the Creed to be written out round the walls of St Peter’s at Rome. His successors had however resented Photius’s attack on the German Church, and by the early years of the eleventh century German-born Western Emperors had imposed its usage on Rome.¹¹⁹

It is difficult to decide how far the difference in theological approach that developed was a matter of differing temperament and how far it was affected by historical circumstances. Certainly, while Eastern Orthodox churchmen from the fourth to the seventh centuries were occupied in fighting Christological heresies and concentrated therefore on emphasizing the hypostases in the Trinity, their contemporaries in the West were fighting the Arianism of the Goths and the polytheism of other Germanic peoples and concentrated therefore on the essential unity of God. Whatever the cause, the contrast in outlook has been summarized by the remark that Western thought tended to take as its starting-point the one nature and then passed to the consideration of the three Persons, but Greek thought followed the reverse course, from the three Persons to the one nature. Basil preferred the latter method. He considered that the Western approach too often led to Sabellianism; it was safer to start from the more concrete formula of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. There was nothing illegitimate in either approach. Ideally the Three and the One should be accepted simultaneously. ‘No sooner do I conceive of the One’, says Gregory of Nazianzus,’ than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three. No sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One.’ But few theologians dwelt on so high a plane.¹²⁰

The liking of the Greeks for the concrete approach was enhanced by their liking for apophatic theology, negative theology, based on what we cannot know. The three Hypostases of God are, so to speak, the relatively knowable parts of God. His essence is simple, unknowable and incommunicable. Any comprehension of the Divine is and can only be relative; and it is only by recognizing the reality of the unconfused distinctions between the three Hypostases in the Trinity that we can begin to understand how God with his unknowable essence can create, sustain and save the knowable world. The Latins did not reject apophatic theology; indeed, it has no finer exponent than Augustine. But they tended to regard the essence of God in a more ontological light and to subordinate the Persons of the Trinity to it. Linguistic problems added to the difference in thought. While essentia is the only possible translation for ουσια, the two words were not always understood in quite the same sense. Persona is not a perfectly exact translation for υποστασις; yet if υποστασις is translated as substantia, which is more accurate, and persona as προσωπον, further confusion arises. To call the Persons of the Trinity Substances seemed to the West to savour of tritheism, while προσωπον in Greek suggests the exterior rather than the personality. Translation constantly added to misunderstanding. Latins and Greeks honestly interpreted the same text in different ways because the words did not have the same connotation to them. The same words of John of Damascus, for instance, are quoted by each side as debating points, because each side read a different sense into the text.¹²¹

The Orthodox, with their apophatic tastes, preferred to avoid dogmatic definitions until the danger of heresy made them necessary. They would have been prepared to leave the question of the Holy Ghost unformulated. ‘You ask’, says Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘what is the procession of the Holy Spirit. Tell me first what is the unbegottenness of the Father, and I shall then explain to you the physiology of the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit; and we shall both of us be stricken with madness for prying into the mystery of God.’¹²² His was the Byzantine attitude. The Latins, however, with their legalistic minds, insisted on prying into the mystery and on explaining the procession of the Spirit; and the explanation that satisfied them involved the addition to the sacred and accepted Creed. It was not mere factiousness on the part of the Patriarch Photius, though he set about the task with undoubted relish, when he took it upon himself to point out to the Pope that the Western Church was condoning a heresy. To him as a Greek the Dual Procession was heresy; but he was in consequence obliged to formulate the doctrine of the Orthodox.

Given its premise, each side had an unanswerable case. Both start from the basic dogma, expressed by John of Damascus, that: ‘The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in all respects save those of being unbegotten, of filiation and of procession.’¹²³ But thereafter the approach is different. A learned Catholic divine has said: ‘Latin philosophy first considers the nature in itself and proceeds to the agent; Greek philosophy first considers the agent and afterwards passes through it to find the nature.’¹²⁴ The Latin world was moving towards the idea of the summum ens. It identified God’s essence with His being; God is absolute, perfect and simple Being. The Trinity has therefore one essence, one nature and one power. The hypostatic characteristics of the Three are absorbed in the essence of the One; and this essence, differentiated by relationships though it is, remains the principle of unity. The relationships become the hypostases instead of being their characteristics. The essence and the hypostatic powers of the Father cannot be distinguished. Hence He begets the Son essentially, and the Son is an essential hypostasis. As the cause and principle of Being in the Trinity is the essence, these two essential hypostases, having no distinction between them, together, according to their common nature, project the Spirit. The unity of God would be broken if we attributed to the Father alone the power to project the Spirit.

The Greek interpretation of ουσια, for which word unfortunately ‘essence’ is the only translation, differs from the Latin interpretation of essentia. To the Greeks essence is entirely simple and unknowable; it is neither Being itself nor the cause of Being in others. It cannot enter into any form of relationship within itself or with anything else. The cause and principle of Being and of unity in the Trinity is therefore the hypostasis of the Father. The distinctions of the hypostases within the Divinity are not according to essence; there is an indivisible division between the essence and the powers. There is one God because there is one Father Who through His hypostatic powers causes the Son by generation and the Spirit by procession. He is the πηγαια θεοτης, the source of all divinity within the Trinity; He brings forth the Son and the Spirit by conferring on them His nature, which remains one and indivisible, identical in all three hypostases. The hypostases signify at the same time the diversity and the unity in reference to the Father, Who is principle as well as recapitulation — συγκεφαλαιωσις — of the Trinity. In the words of Dionysius of Alexandria: ‘We extend the monad indivisibly into the triad and we recapitulate the triad without diminution into the monad.’ To quote Gregory of Nazianzus once more: ‘In my opinion we safeguard the one only God in referring the Son and the Spirit to a single Principle, neither commixing nor confounding them’, and: ‘The Three have one nature, God; and the union — ενωσις — is the Father.’ Irenaeus goes even further when he calls the Son and the Holy Spirit the two arms of God; but the idea is the same. Some centuries later Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria, gives the traditional Byzantine view when he compares the Father to the sun, the Son to the rays of the sun and the Spirit to the light or heat given by the sun. We can talk of the light of the rays, but the sun remains the principle.¹²⁵

Holding such an interpretation of the Trinity the Greeks could not accept the Latin addition. Their Economy, though it might enable them to overook differences in ritual, could not be stretched far enough to include an alteration in the Symbol of Faith as it had been laid down by the Fathers at an Oecumenical Council inspired by the Holy Spirit, and one which contradicted their conception of the Trinity. The Latins on their side could claim that the addition stemmed logically from the doctrine of the Trinity as they interpreted it, and had moreover been endorsed by the supreme doctrinal authority of the Papacy. Neither side would yield to the other’s arguments, because the dispute was not so much about the addition itself as about whether any addition could be made to the Creed and, more fundamentally, the whole nature of the Trinity. It was futile for the Latins to think that they had scored a point when they quoted Greek Fathers from Paul onwards who used the phrase ‘the spirit of Christ’. The phrase did not mean the same to the Greeks. John of Damascus indeed used the phrase, as the Latins gleefully pointed out; but what he said was: ‘It should be understood that we do not speak of the Father as being derived from anyone; we speak of Him as the Father of the Son. We speak of the Son neither as cause nor Father; we speak of Him both as from the Father and Son of the Father. We speak likewise of the Holy Spirit as from the Father and call Him the Spirit of the Father. We do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son, yet we call Him the Spirit of the Son.’ His attitude is somewhat apophatic and full of the Greek love for paradox. It was not so easy to support as was the clearer-cut attitude of the Latins.¹²⁶

There were Greeks who were won over to the Latin view. Some of them were not theologians; they felt that the niceties of dogma should not outweigh the practical, cultural and moral advantages of union. But others were sincerely convinced by the Latin dogma, and among them were men with the finest philosophical brains in Byzantine history. But it was because they were philosophers that they found the rationalism of the Latins more sympathetic than the Greek apophatic tradition.

The Greek Fathers had always allowed that the Holy Spirit proceeded through the Son. It was the coming of the Word that enabled the Spirit to penetrate throughout the world. For example, Theophylact of Bulgaria says that we must believe that the Spirit proceeds from the Father but is given to the created world through the Son.¹²⁷ The Latins argued with some reason that the phrase suggested that the connection between the Son and the Spirit was limited by time, beginning only at the historic moment of the Incarnation. Some Greeks hoped that, if a formula could be found which cleared up that difficulty, the Latins might be induced to drop the hated addition. Nicephorus Blemmydes the philosopher suggested, rather as Augustine had done, that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son as from one principle, but originally or principally from the Father alone. The compromise pleased nobody. But it suggested a possible line for compromise.¹²⁸

Blemmydes’s suggestion was made at a time when the Nicaean I Emperors were holding out hopes of union to the Pope in order I to dissuade him from trying to prop up the dying Latin Empire 1 of Constantinople. Their sincerity was dubious; and in any case their Church was determined that they should not go too far. But after the recapture of Constantinople Michael VIII Palaeologus was seriously alarmed by the preparations made by the Papal protege, Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, to restore the Latin Emperor. To counter Charles he opened negotations on union with the Papacy. In 1273, despite the protests of the Patriarch I Joseph, he browbeat a synod into admitting the full primacy of I the Roman see, the right of every churchman to appeal to it and j the need for the Pope’s name to be mentioned in the Liturgy. Next year he sent a delegation to announce his submission to the Council that Pope Gregory X was holding at Lyons. It was not an impressive delegation, particularly after one of the ships, carrying two high court officials, a number of clerks and secretaries and all the Imperial gifts to the Pope, was wrecked with heavy loss of life off Cape Malea on the way to Italy. The most impressive member was the lay philosopher, George Acropolita, who attended as the Emperor’s personal representative. Of the two ecclesiastical representatives, one was the discredited ex-Patriarch Germanus, the other Theophanes, Metropolitan of Nicaea, a man of no distinction. No bishop of quality would go on the Emperor’s mission. There was no theological debate. The delegation merely handed to the Pope letters from the Emperor, his son and a few Greek clerics, accepting his authority. Five days later a religious service was held, attended by all the Council and partly sung in Greek, at which the Creed was recited with the addition. It was remarked that at the crucial moment the Metropolitan of Nicaea firmly closed his lips.¹²⁹

Michael himself remained loyal to the Union of Lyons, even though he could not force it upon his Church and even though it was useless in stopping Charles’s activities, which were only thwarted by the long and expensive diplomatic intrigue ending in the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers. His secretary Acropolita was a genuine convert to the Roman Church. But the tract explaining his conversion has not survived; it was destroyed by order of the Emperor Andronicus II. He had apparently been won over by a Franciscan monk of Greek origin, John Parastron, whose gentle charm made him well liked at Constantinople. Parastron was probably also responsible for the conversion of a man of finer intellect, John Veccus, who was to be the first pro-Unionist Patriarch of Constantinople. Veccus wrote several tracts to prove that the Greek Fathers, including Athanasius, Chrysostom and the Cappadocians, when they said: ‘through the Son’ really meant: ‘from the Son’. His arguments were ably put; but chose to interpret ουσια as being the exact equivalent of the Latin essentia, and he blandly ignored the many texts, particularly in the Cappadocians’ works, which were clearly opposed to his thesis.¹³⁰

Amongst his opponents was a professor, George of Cyprus, who became Patriarch in 1283 as Gregory II. Gregory, though he disliked the Union of Lyons, genuinely sought for a formula which might satisfy Latin objections to the Greek doctrine by stressing the eternal relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit. His attempts pleased no one. They were denounced by the Arsenites and their patron, Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria, by John Cheilas, who was both anti-Arsenite and anti-Latin, and by John Veccus, who pointed out that it depended on a senseless distinction between ‘existing’ and ‘having existence’. Gregory’s more extreme views were put forward in a book written by one of his disciples, a monk called Mark. The book is now lost, and Gregory himself repudiated it later. But the Council of 1285, held to abrogate the Union of Lyons and considered by later Greeks as being of almost Oecumenical authority, endorsed a tomus drafted by Gregory, which spoke of an ‘eternal manifestation’ of the Spirit by the Son; and went on to repeat Theophylact of Bulgaria’s comparison of the Trinity to the sun, its rays and its light, which also suggests an eternal relationship.¹³¹

Veccus’s pro-Latin views were supported by his friends, Constantine of Melitene and George Metochites, both of whom wrote tracts echoing his interpretation of the Greek Fathers. The historian George Pachymer, who disapproved of the Union of Lyons, tried to show in a treatise that the formula ‘from the Father through the Son’ did not exclude the Son from having some not clearly defined part in the procession. Like Gregory II, he was attacked from both sides for his pains.¹³²

In the course of the fourteenth century the whole argument moved to a different plane. The political advantages of union were enhanced by the growing Turkish menace. The memories of the Latin Empire were losing some of their bitterness with the passage of the years; and Michael VIII’s persecution of his opponents was gradually forgotten except in monastic circles. The presence of increasing numbers of Italian merchants in the Empire, though it aroused jealousy and resentment, at the same time created closer intellectual contacts. The discovery of Greek philosophy by the West, though it was mainly due to Arab intermediaries, led Italians who had some personal knowledge of Byzantium to realize what stores of ancient learning Byzantium contained and to take an interest in the cultural life of the Greeks among whom they lived. The Byzantines on their side began to discover that the Italians were no longer barbarians. Many Italians learnt to read Greek and began to visit and to correspond with Greek scholars. A few Byzantines began to study Latin literature. A turning-point was reached when a young scholar, Demetrius Cydones, learnt Latin from a Spanish Dominican friar living at Pera, the Genoese colony just across the Golden Horn, and then set himself the task of rendering into Greek the works of Thomas Aquinas. His translations were circulated among Byzantine intellectuals; and many of them were attracted by so complete a philosophical interpretation of Christian doctrine. Thomism is based on the Latin view of the Trinity. It emphasizes the unity of the Substance at the expense of the separatedness of the Persons. Many Greeks hesitated to abandon the traditional Eastern outlook; and the translation of terms still caused problems. But intellectual circles in Constantinople were readier now to try to understand the Latin attitude.¹³³

On the other hand this coincided with a movement within the Greek Church which developed and gave precision to the Greek attitude. Gregory Palamas’s doctrine of the Divine Energies not only provided the dogmatic basis to the Greek view of mysticism.¹³⁴ It was also a restatement of the traditional interpretation of the Greek Fathers’ theory of God’s relation to man. It came to be accepted by a series of fourteenth-century Councils as the official doctrine of the Greek Church. To Western theologians it seemed to be clear heresy. It could not be reconciled with Thomism, which many Greeks were beginning to regard with sympathy. This led many of the anti-Palamite intellectuals in Byzantium to come out openly in favour of union with Rome. Some of them, such as Manuel Chrysoloras, retired to Italy to make their careers there as lecturers, while Demetrius Cydones himself, after deeply involving himself in anti-Palamite controversy, ended his life as a member of the Roman Church in a monastery in the Venetian colony of Crete. Other unionists remained to fight for their cause at Constantinople.¹³⁵

The Byzantines in favour of union always insisted that it could only be achieved if the doctrinal issues were discussed at a Council that could rank as Oecumenical. They also hoped that such a Council could be held in Byzantine territory, as otherwise the Easterners would certainly be outnumbered and subjected to political pressure. The failure of the union accepted at Lyons was held to be due to the inadequacy of the Greek delegation and the fact that they were operating so far from home. The Calabrian Greek Barlaam, whom we shall meet over the Palamite controversy, sent a well-thought-out memorandum along those lines to Pope Benedict XII in 1339. The Emperor John Cantacuzenus wrote a similar suggestion to Rome in 1350. But the Papacy was doubtful. In Roman eyes the Council of Lyons had been an Oecumenical Council, whose decisions should be binding. It would be wrong, in theory and in practice, to reopen the question. Moreover a Council held in Byzantine territory would in its turn put the Western delegation at a disadvantage. They might be outnumbered and be faced with majority decisions that they could not accept.¹³⁶

The Emperor John V Palaeologus, son of a Latin mother and himself sympathetic to the West, in the first flush of his triumph over the usurping Cantacuzeni, opened direct negotiations with the Papacy. In 1355 he wrote to Innocent VI to say that, if the Pope would send him five galleys, 1,000 foot-soldiers and 500 horsemen, he would guarantee to convert all his subjects within six months. He offered to send his second son, Manuel, to be educated at the Papal Court, and offered to promise to abdicate in Manuel’s favour should he not achieve union.¹³⁷ But the Pope had no troops to send. The dispatch of his blessing and a Papal legate was not the same thing. John V wrote again to say that under the circumstances he could not overcome the opposition to union among his people. But a few years later, in 1369, he himself journeyed to Rome, encouraged by his cousin Amadeus of Savoy, the ‘Green Knight’, to believe that his own conversion would produce military help. At Rome he publicly submitted himself to the Pope. But not one of his clerics would accompany him on the journey, and none of his officials followed his example; and he refused to put pressure on them. He seems to have expected, in vain, that the Pope would at least now agree to a Council at Constantinople. Meanwhile his Patriarch, Philotheus Coccinus, wrote anxious letters to the Orthodox throughout the East, warning them of the dangers of union.¹³⁸

The Papacy was soon to be in no position to organize military help or even to negotiate on union. The Great Schism of the West began in 1378. But the Schism had the result that the Western Church itself began to feel the need for an Oecumenical Council and to review the Pope’s relationship to such a Council; for if a Council was to end the Schism its authority must be superior to that of any of the rival Popes. If a Council were to be summoned, then the Greeks could and should take part in it. The Greeks were wooed, and were ready to be wooed if the supremacy of a Council was to be admitted. The Emperor Manuel, who succeeded to John V in 1390, was, however, cautious. He was himself a trained theologian who personally disagreed with Latin theology. His advice, given in old age to his son John VIII, was not to break off negotiations over union but not to commit himself to it; Latin pride and Greek obstinacy would prevent it from ever being genuine, he thought.¹³⁹ He was not anti-Western. He encouraged the study of Western culture at Constantinople, and himself spent several years in the West, seeking for allies among its lay potentates, and, incidentally, debating on theology with the professors at the Sorbonne, for whose benefit he wrote a treatise refuting the Latin doctrine on the Holy Spirit. He was invited to send representatives to the Councils of Pisa and Constance. His unionist friend, Manuel Chrysoloras, with two noblemen from the Peloponnese, attended the latter Council as observers on his behalf. Chrysoloras, who made such a good impression on the assembled Fathers that they considered him a possible candidate for the Papacy, unfortunately died just as the sessions were beginning. But a Byzantine embassy, composed of diplomats, arrived at the Council of Constance and there interviewed the newly elected Pope, Martin V. We do not know what proposals they brought with them; but they were friendly enough for the Pope to name a delegation to go to Constantinople to arrange for what was called in the West the ‘reduction of the Greeks’.2

Negotiations dragged on, held up partly by the Pope’s difficulties with the leaders of the Conciliar movement and partly by the uneasy situation in the East. At one moment it seemed that a Council might take place at Constantinople; but the Turkish siege of the city in 1422 made it clear that it was no place for an international congress. Manuel II retired from active politics in 1423 and died two years later. His son, John VIII, was convinced that the salvation of the Empire depended upon union and tried to press for a Council; but he was unwilling at first to allow it to take place in Italy; while the Papacy still had problems to settle in the West. Delays continued. It was not till the beginning of 1438 that plans were completed and the Emperor arrived with his delegation at a Council recently opened at Ferrara and transferred to Florence in January 1439.¹⁴⁰

We are fortunate in having full records of the debates at Florence; but their reading leaves one with a curious sense of unreality. The Latin delegates to the Council were a formidable team, all of them trained philosophers well read in the works of the Fathers. There were three learned Dominicans, the Greek-born Andrew Chrysoberges, Archbishop of Rhodes, John of Montenero, Provincial of Lombardy, and the formidable John Torquemada. They were led by Cardinal Cesarini; and in the background was the Pope himself, Eugenius IV, to see that their efforts were co-ordinated. It was less easy for the Emperor John to produce a first-class delegation to accompany him to Italy. Many of his bishops refused to attend, and those that came inherited the Eastern view, dear to the individualistic nature of the Greeks, that all bishops had an equal right to air their views. There was little team-spirit about them; and the Emperor remarked more than once that his best theologians were laymen. In fact the three most active delegates had been monks, consecrated as bishops only on the eve of the Council. These were Bessarion of Trebizond, Metropolitan of Nicaea, Mark Eugenicus, Metropolitan of Ephesus, and Isidore, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia. They were accompanied by the Patriarch Joseph II, a gentle, frail old man with no great mental powers, the illegitimate son of a Bulgarian Tsar and a Greek lady. The remaining Greek prelates who attended were even more mediocre. Of the lay delegates, besides the Emperor himself and his brother Demetrius, the most distinguished were four philosophers, all called George: George Scholarius, George Amiroutzes, George of Trebizond and the aged and eccentric neo-Platonist, George Gemistus Plethon. On the Emperor’s insistence the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem nominated delegates to represent them from amongst the attending clerics; but they made it clear that they would not necessarily be bound by what those representatives might decide. The Georgian Church sent a bishop and a layman.

George Scholarius, who at the time favoured union, though he changed his mind later, freely admitted that his compatriots were no match for the Latins in erudition and dialectic skill. Moreover, they disagreed with each other; and their task was not made easier by the Emperor. Despite his anxiety not to damage the dignity of his Imperial majesty or his Church, he was determined to achieve union. He was a shrewd enough theologian to see that there were issues on which agreement would be impossible. These were fundamental issues, the whole theory of the hypostases of the Trinity, and the particular doctrine of the Energies of God, approved by the whole Eastern Church and denounced as heresy by the West. He forbade his delegation to touch on them. When towards the end of the Council the Latins raised the question of the Energies, the Greeks had to reply with embarrassment that they were unable to discuss it. It is hard to see how a Council which shirked the main matters of discord could hope to achieve concord.

The issues that were allowed to be discussed were four: the procession of the Holy Ghost, the bread in the Sacrament and other liturgical differences, the doctrine of Purgatory and the position of the Pope. Matters such as the marriage of clergy and divorce were left to be settled later. It was agreed that the basis of discussion should be reference to the Holy Scriptures, the canons of the Oecumenical Councils and the works of those of the Fathers who were recognized as saints by the Universal Church. After some pressure the Greeks were induced to accept that the Latin Fathers were of equal standing with the Greek. This at once put them at a disadvantage, as they were very little acquainted with the Latin Fathers. To an objective observer the bandying of texts, however holy, hardly seems to be a satisfactory means for arriving at eternal truths. Moreover the teachings of the Fathers were often inconsistent and the canons of the Councils often deliberately vague and their Greek and Latin versions often completely different. The whole question of translation added difficulties.

Of the issues discussed that of Purgatory caused the least trouble. The Greek Church held no definite dogma about Purgatory, and though Mark Eugenicus prepared a statement which opposed the Latin dogma he admitted that his views were purely personal. The Greeks in general held that the souls of the dead did not reach their final destination until the Last Judgment, but that it was not for us to know what happened to them between death and the Judgment. They had no specific objection to the Latin doctrine and were prepared to allow it, though they thought it oversure and they disliked the phrase in the Latin formula that ‘the blessed see God’, as it missed the distinction between His substance and His energies; but they did not press the point.

The ritual points, after some argument, were settled by compromise. The Latins agreed that the Greek use of the zeon was permissible. It was decided that the bread at the Eucharist might be leavened or unleavened, neither practice being wrong. The Greeks could continue to employ the Epiklesis, but they were required to admit that it was unnecessary, as it was the Dominical words that changed the elements. Many of the Greeks felt that they had been tricked, as the Emperor presented them with this decision as a fait accompli. They anyhow felt that over this, as over the permission to use unleavened bread, the Holy Spirit was being insulted.

It was the procession of the Holy Spirit that caused most trouble. Discussions on it took up more time than anything else at the Council; and its definition took up more space than anything else in the final Act of Union. Innumerable texts were brought up and disputed. Here the problem of translation was particularly acute. The Greeks at first rightly would not accept that υποστασις and προσωπον should both be rendered as persona. Their yielding on this point weakened their arguments. The Latins later agreed to translate υποστασις as subsistentia; but that made little difference. The crucial word αιτια was translated by the Latins as causa. Principium, which would have been closer in meaning, was equated with αρχη. These renderings led to genuine misunderstanding. The Latin argument was that the addition to the Creed was purely explanatory. They pointed out that the Second Oecumenical Council had made just such an addition to the Creed agreed at Nicaea. They then showed that not only the Latin Fathers but a number of Greek Fathers upheld the doctrine; and the saints must agree among themselves. The official Greek doctrine of the procession ‘through the Son’ must therefore mean the same as ‘from the Son’. The texts which they quoted from Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, John Chrysostom and Symeon Metaphrastes seemed to support the Latin contention, but only because the Latins did not admit the distinction made by the Greeks between the ουσια and the υποστασεις in the Trinity; and they ignored texts from Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus and others which might have shown that, regrettably, the saints have not always agreed. They did however quote two texts, one from Epiphanius and one from Basil, which seemed definitely and fully to support the Dual Procession. Indeed, Epiphanius’s words admit of no other interpretation, though Basil’s were vaguer and, if compared with other of his statements, can be interpreted differently. Mark Eugenicus, supporting the extreme Greek view, claimed that the texts had been falsified, but he could not prove his case. Further, having accepted the sanctity of the Latin Fathers, he was obliged to suggest that their works too had been tampered with. Indeed, the very inconsistency of the Fathers could be used to support the Latin view; it suggested that they did not draw a nice distinction between ‘through’ and ‘from’.

Indeed, in the arguments the Latins had the best of it. Bessarion, who was the most learned of the Greek prelates, allowed himself to be convinced by them, quite sincerely, though his desire for union was mainly from a desire to integrate Byzantine with Western culture. Isidore of Kiev followed his lead, as did the lay philosophers, with the exception of Plethon who had attended very few of the meetings, preferring to spend his time in Florence giving lectures on Plato to enthusiastic audiences. The old Patriarch Joseph wished for union and was prepared to admit that ‘through’ and ‘from’ meant the same thing. But he died before the Council was ended. George Scholarius scornfully remarked afterwards that after muddling his prepositions there was nothing left for the old man to do but die; but Scholarius himself at the time was ready to accept the Latin argument that, as the Persons of the Trinity were of the same substance, it did not matter whether one said ‘through’ or ‘from’ the Son, so long as it was clear that only one principle was involved. Only Mark of Ephesus continued to hold out. But, hampered by restrictions imposed by the Emperor, by difficulties of translation and ignorance of Latin and by his deep respect for the apophatic traditions of his Church, he proved an ineffectual debater.

The fundamental question of the Pope’s supremacy was passed over rather quickly. If the Pope’s claim to be the supreme doctrinal as well as disciplinary authority were admitted, then his views on doctrine should prevail without further argument. But even the Latins were shy of going so far, as it would logically have made the summoning of a Council superfluous; and the Conciliar movement was still strong in the West. Moreover they wished to prove by argument that their theology was correct. The Greeks were forbidden to bring up the question whether the Pope had any right to add to the Creed. The Latins demanded that the Pope should have full disciplinary powers over the whole Church and that as regards doctrine he should have the right on his sole authority to summon a Council to deal with doctrine and to bind the whole Church to its findings. The Emperor found this point hard to accept, as it was traditionally for an Emperor to summon an Oecumenical Council. He fought so hard for his right that in the end the question of the summoning of a Council was left vague. The Greeks tried in vain to have some mention made of the rights and privileges of the Eastern Patriarchates. The ultimate formula left much unsaid. It attributed to the Bishop of Rome full power to rule and govern the whole Church and all Christians, ‘as the acts of the Oecumenical Councils and the Holy Canons have laid down’. The Greeks protested at the word ‘all’ but had in the end to accept it. The word translated here as ‘as’ was a little equivocal. There is reason to believe that the original Latin text used the words quemadmodum et, ‘as far as’, but they were later changed to quemadmodum etiam, ‘just as’. The Greek text says καθ’ ον τροπον, ‘according to the manner that’, which can be regarded as a limitative clause or not, as the reader chooses.¹⁴¹

In the end, weary of it all, longing to get home and, it was said, deliberately kept short of food and comforts, the whole Greek delegation, under orders from the Emperor and in obedience to the concordat of their Church with John V, signed the decree of union, with the exception of Mark Eugenicus, and, it seems, of Plethon, who disliked the Latin Church rather more than he disliked the Greek. Mark was threatened with deposition; and, after retiring for a while to his see of Ephesus, in Turkish territory, he submitted to pressure and abdicated.¹⁴²

He was treated as a martyr by almost the whole body of the Greek Church. The Emperor soon found that it was easier to sign the union than to implement it. He remained personally loyal to it, but, influenced by his aged mother, he refrained from trying to force it on his people. He found it hard to persuade anyone to take the empty Patriarchal chair. Metrophanes II, whom he appointed in May 1440, died soon afterwards. His successor, Gregory Mammas, who was a sincere advocate of union, found it prudent to retire to Italy in 1451. Bessarion, liked and admired though he was personally, had already moved to Italy, shocked at the hostility that his actions had aroused at Constantinople and believing that he could best serve the Greek cause by remaining among the Italians. Isidore of Kiev’s adherence to union was angrily repudiated by the Russian Prince, Church and people, who deprived him of his see. He too went to Italy. The Eastern Patriarchs announced that they were not bound by anything that their representatives had signed and rejected the union. George Scholarius, though he had accepted the union and was devoted to the works of Thomas Aquinas, was soon convinced by Mark Eugenicus that he had been wrong. He retired into a monastery; and on Mark’s death in 1444 he emerged as leader of the anti-unionist party. The lesser clergy and the monks followed him almost to a man.

The Emperor John VIII died weary and disillusioned in 1448. His brother and heir Constantine XI considered himself bound by the union; but he did not try to press it on his people till the very eve of the final Turkish siege. In the autumn of 1452 Isidore of Kiev, now a Roman cardinal, arrived at Constantinople with the union decree, which was solemnly read out in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia on 12 December. Isidore, who was anxious that everything should go smoothly, reported that it was well received. But his Italian assistant, Leonard of Chios, Archbishop of Mitylene, wrote angrily that few people were present and many officials boycotted the ceremony. Certainly, though during the last few months of the Empire’s existence Saint Sophia was served by Latin and by a handful of unionist clergy, its altars were almost deserted. The vast majority of the clergy and the congregations of the city would have nothing to do with them.¹⁴³

Had the Papacy been able to follow up union with effective material help, it is possible that the Byzantine populace would have accepted it. As it was, when Isidore arrived with a hundred soldiers there was at once a movement in his favour, though it faded away when it was seen that that was the full extent of Papal aid. A few officials at the court and a few scholars remained faithful to the union; and there were others who were prepared to condone it till the crisis should be over, so long as there was a chance that then a new Council could be held, this time at Constantinople. The Emperor’s chief minister, Lucas Notaras, seems to have been of this view; but the intransigence of the Latin clergy, led by Leonard of Chios, dashed any hopes that he might have had and forced from him the bitter comment that he would sooner see the Sultan’s turban than the Cardinal’s hat.¹⁴⁴

It was in this atmosphere of unhappy controversy that the Turkish siege of the city began. Only on the last night of the city’s freedom was there any union when clergy and congregation, whatever they might feel about it, came together for a final liturgy in Saint Sophia. By then it was clear to all that union had not saved and could not save Byzantium. Whether they liked it or not the Byzantines were to see the Sultan’s turban in their midst.